Helping you get your shit together

If not you, then who?

Who decides what is important to you? Who decides by what measurement you value your work, your efforts and your life? If it isn’t you, than who is making those decisions for you?

What gets measured gets done. How you measure success determines what actions you take and how you live your life. U.S.S.R. was a communist country and, therefore, it didn’t have the normal flow of capital to tell its factories what to make. It had wanted to increase production and put out a message to the factories that they would be measured on total weight produced. How did the nail factories respond? They produced more goods as measured in tonnage. How did they do that? They made large rough nails that are easy and quick to produce. Unfortunately, there was no demand for these nails and they stopped producing the regular sized nails that were in demand. The central agency figured out their mistake and changed the measurement. From now on, they were going to measure production by the number of units produced. How did the nail factories respond? They produced more nails. How did they do that? They produced tiny finishing nails that were barely larger than thumb tacks. It is kind of hard to build a house with finishing nails.

The point is, what you measure matters. If you are allowing others to decide how your success is going to be measured, you are allowing others to control what you value and what actions you are going to take.